Gears is an open source project run by Google which allows users to take online data offline via a web browser plug-in. It can, for example, allow you to read Google Reader feed items even when your computer is not connected to the Internet, and soon it will allow you to read your Gmail messages too. Unfortunately, thus far to use it you had to be running either Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox browsers. For those of us on a Mac, Firefox was the only option. Now there is another: Safari.

If you’re still feeling confident enough to test it out, head over to the page with the link to download. You will need at least Safari 3.1.1 on Tiger 10.4.11 or Leopard 10.5.3. It is also recommended that you have Gears version 0.4.16.0.